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Amsterdam and Italy

March - April 2023
A 28-day adventure by Diane Read more
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  • Diane and DarrylAmsterdam and Italy
    Day 1

    Arriving in Amsterdam

    March 31, 2023 in the Netherlands ⋅ 🌧 52 °F

    We are visiting our Berkeley friends, Mike and Teresa, who have been living in Amsterdam for nearly a year (with forays in and out of the Netherlands to maintain their visa status). To keep us awake after our transatlantic journey, we all took a walk from their apartment to various parts of the city.

    It was a rainy and cool day, but the city is so charming, with the canals, the numerous bicycle riders, and the unique architecture, we didn’t mind the weather so much. Our goal was to visit the Canal House museum, which tells the story of how Amsterdam gradually grew as it reclaimed land from the peat bogs and the sea starting some 1,000 years ago. The museum was built in 1665, commissioned by a Dutch merchant for his home along one of the main canals.

    Further walking took us to a houseboat museum (there are around 2,500 houseboats in Amsterdam, but if you want to live in one, you need to find one someone is vacating—no more mooring permits are being issued).

    We also checked out the huge new bicycle parking garage built under the water at the Amsterdam train station, which just opened this February. It can store nearly 7,000 bicycles!    Read more

  • Diane and DarrylAmsterdam and Italy
    Day 2

    Morning Market and the Dutch Resistance

    April 1, 2023 in the Netherlands ⋅ 🌧 52 °F

    We started the day at a great Saturday market near Mike and Teresa’s apartment—cheese, bread, fish, meat, nuts, pies, wine—everything you could need for a nice meal!

    Teresa took us to the Dutch Resistance Museum, where we spent several hours learning about the history of the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands. As the name suggests, the focus of the museum was on the people who worked to undermine the Nazi efforts at deportation of Jews, Romanis and homosexuals and later on, even removal of non-Jewish working-age Dutch people to labor camps. The museum was started by former resistance members and tells not only the history of the resistance to the German occupation of The Netherlands but also about the lives of 100 individuals from the time—some Jewish, some Nazi, some Dutch traitors/Nazi collaborators and many resistance members.

    The museum also offers a self-guided audio walking tour to 20+ sites in the area that were significant in that time: the nursery where young children were kept after their parents were sent to work camps (or worse), and where Dutch volunteers smuggled many children out of Amsterdam to safety; the Holocaust Names memorial—dedicated to the over 102,000 Dutch victims of the Holocaust without a grave; even the zoo, where some Jews were hidden, and though food was exceedingly scarce, the zookeeper managed to continue feeding the animals (and some of the refugees).

    We soldiered on through the continuous misty rain and chill, because, well, we’re here to experience the city. We came back to the Olsons’ cozy warm apartment (did I mention the 2 flights of STEEP stairs in this old canal house?). In their bright and spacious kitchen we heated up the mini chicken and veggie pies we’d picked up at the morning market for our dinner.    Read more

  • Diane and DarrylAmsterdam and Italy
    Day 3

    A Day in Delft

    April 2, 2023 in the Netherlands ⋅ ☀️ 50 °F

    Sunshine today! This was a good day to get out of town to visit Delft, about an hour south of Amsterdam by train. We started with a self-guided tour of the Royal Delft factory, one of the last remaining in Delft and nearly 400 years old.

    “Delft Blue” is decorated with cobalt oxide, which paints on as black but oxidizes to blue upon firing. Becoming a master painter at Royal Delft involves an eight year training process.

    The town of Delft, a university town, is quaint and lively. Of course there are canals, and plenty of outdoor dining spaces (sporting much-appreciated blankets draped over the chairs!).

    We even got to see our first Dutch windmill. Although it was closed on Sunday, it is a working grain/flour mill that dates back to the late 1600s (although it has been rebuilt over the years).    Read more

  • Diane and DarrylAmsterdam and Italy
    Day 4

    Vondelpark, Street Art & Anne Frank

    April 3, 2023 in the Netherlands ⋅ ☀️ 50 °F

    Just a couple blocks from Mike & Teresa’s apartment is Vondelpark, like a small Golden Gate Park, with lakes (of course—no shortage of water!), separate bike and walking paths, an open-air theatre, playgrounds and a couple of cafes. Large homes border one side of the park, and we caught sight of the resident wild parrots and nesting herons (big nests!). Daffodils are blooming and the trees are sprouting new leaves.

    From this bucolic setting, we moved on to The STRAAT street art museum—an easy tram-and-ferry trip from our home away from home. M&T have a membership to this museum, and love to share it with visitors. A former ship-building warehouse provides space for large-format works of street art and the artists who create them. We’re talking graffiti (a bit ), but so, so much more. See the photos, because words just can’t describe it. For example, President Obama’s “Hope” poster falls into the category of many of these paintings.

    Finally, the two of us switched gears again to get to our 5pm entry for the much-in-demand Anne Frank house. This museum is on the site of the building where she and her family, along with four others, hid from the Nazis for two years until they were arrested and sent to concentration camps. They had non-Jewish friends who helped bring them food and news. It’s a sad story, as we all know. It was interesting seeing the place where they stayed, which was sort of like a very small apartment, not a closet or basement as we envisioned. The self-guided audio tour was very well done, incorporating many of Anne Frank’s words from her diary and emphasizing that there are many, many stories like Anne Frank’s.    Read more

  • Diane and DarrylAmsterdam and Italy
    Day 5

    Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum & a Bike Ride

    April 4, 2023 in the Netherlands ⋅ ☀️ 50 °F

    Today was the day we’d been planning for half a year. Teresa had bought tickets for the Johannes Vermeer exhibit back in September. This widely publicized show is at the Rijksmuseum, the national museum of the Netherlands. We’d read articles and watched videos and documentaries to learn about Vermeer and about the 150-year-old museum itself. A documentary from our Berkeley library chronicles the 10-year, over-budget renovation of the museum from 2003 to 2013. A significant reason for the delayed re-opening was due to a controversy over whether the bike and pedestrian path under the museum would remain open. At one point the museum director remarked, “I am more busy with cyclists than with Rembrandt.”

    Now, back to 2023. The exhibition was billed as the largest ever collection of Vermeer paintings in one show. Through a series of international loans, the museum is exhibiting around 27 of the 37 known paintings. All we can say is it lived up to the hype. We’re glad we got an initial orientation to ALL of his known paintings (in prints) at the museum in Delft, two days earlier. It gave us a chance to study some of our favorites and identify features pointed out at Delft.

    Amsterdam native Rembrandt, is also heavily featured in the Rijksmuseum, and we saw some wonderful works of his, along with other Dutch Masters’ works. There are also two impeccably decorated doll’s houses, using authentic materials and precise proportions.

    After all that culture, we decided to take advantage of another sunny (and slightly less cool) day and rent bikes for the afternoon. M & T have their own bikes, of course. In about 10 minutes we were out of the city and riding in the Amsterdamse Bos (forest/woods), which is really a large park with great bike paths and many recreational activities, including a little farm. After a couple of hours we arrived at Molen van Sloten, a working drainage windmill, and we happened to be just in time for a really informative tour. Many parts of the Netherlands are below sea level (including the international airport, at 6 meters below!), so windmills are still used to pump water out of the buildable land area and out to the sea by way of canals. Our guide, Olaf, was one of the operators of the windmill.

    On the bike ride home, during the commute hours, we got to live like the locals and dodge trucks parked in the bike lanes, pedestrians, mass quantities of cyclists and cars trying to use the bike lanes as traffic work-arounds. We handled it with aplomb!    Read more

  • Diane and DarrylAmsterdam and Italy
    Day 6

    Keukenhof Gardens

    April 5, 2023 in the Netherlands ⋅ ⛅ 52 °F

    The two of us traveled by bus to one of the world's largest flower gardens, during nearly prime season for flowering bulbs—daffodils, tulips, crocus, fragrant hyacinths and more. The gardens are huge, and laid out with winding pathways and attractive lakes and streams. At this time, the cherry trees and forsythia bushes were adding to the spectacle.

    The street organ in the video and photos was built in 1978 from old organ parts. It is named after an old windmill from Haarlem (“The Adriaen”). The organ plays on the perforated book system that was Invented in 1897. They played typical calliope music, Glen Miller tunes, and hits from Beyoncé and Coldplay (!).    Read more

  • Diane and DarrylAmsterdam and Italy
    Day 7

    Van Gogh and a Rock Concert

    April 6, 2023 in the Netherlands ⋅ 🌧 46 °F

    There are a few museums in Amsterdam that you absolutely must have advance tickets for—the Anne Frank House, the Vermeer exhibit at the Rijksmuseum (sold out now), and the Van Gogh Museum. Luckily, we planned ahead.

    Van Gogh produced around 900 paintings over only 10 years. The museum contains the largest collection of his paintings, drawings, prints and letters. It also displays a collection of art that Vincent and his brother Theo assembled together, consisting of works by contemporaries like Gauguin, Picasso, Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec, and many more.

    One sort of funny story is that Vincent painted the Almond Blossoms as a gift for his newborn nephew (who would later go on to spearhead the construction of a dedicated Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam). In the audio tour, the nephew talked about how he and his two brothers would have pillow fights in their bedroom, where the Almond Blossoms painting hung. It came through unscathed!

    Because of all of the letters the brothers exchanged, the audio tour contained many quotes from Vincent about his art, which really is so much better than art curators surmising what the significance of an art work is.

    MIke and Teresa’s apartment is conveniently located within a short walking or tram-ride distance to all of the museums we’ve visited. It was also convenient for us to travel to the concert venue where we saw a concert by former Pink Floyd co-lead Roger Waters. Lots of video imagery and a very creative center stage setting in the Amsterdam Ziggo Dome.    Read more

  • Diane and DarrylAmsterdam and Italy
    Day 8

    Canal Cruise, Dutch Pancakes & A Queen

    April 7, 2023 in the Netherlands ⋅ ☁️ 50 °F

    For our last full day in Amsterdam, we worked on checking off the last of our touristy things to do. Mike and Teresa took us to one of their favorite Dutch pancake cafes. They come sweet and savory, so we tried each!

    Next, we took a small, open-air canal boat tour. The skipper was from Amsterdam and the mate was a university student from Spain studying at the Free School in Amsterdam (doesn’t mean free tuition). They both shared a lot of information about the old city and the canals. For example: Amsterdam has around 1.4 million bikes, which amounts to about 1.6 bikes per person; every year, 15,000 bikes are pulled out of the canals (and a number of cars too); some of the large canal houses sell for close to 40 million Euros (!).

    Later, the two of us walked to Dam Square, which dates back to the earliest days of the city’s founding (13th century). Located at the square is the Royal Palace (closed to visitors this week) and the Nieuwe Kerk (new church—15th century). The church is now a museum, which is presenting an exhibit about Queen Juliana, who reigned from 1948–80. That is probably not a typical touristy thing to do, but we learned a lot about this very progressive and down-to-earth Dutch ruler, who is the grandmother of the current king—Willem-Alexander.

    Finally, we had a special dinner at The Secret Garden, the site of the former Rosa’s Kitchen, where Mike was a cook in the 1980s. The restaurant features Peruvian-Japanese small plate dishes, which were beautifully presented!    Read more

  • Diane and DarrylAmsterdam and Italy
    Day 9

    Farewell Amsterdam, Buon Giorno Naples

    April 8, 2023 in the Netherlands ⋅ ⛅ 55 °F

    We flew from Amsterdam to Naples today, and to our minds, the cities couldn’t be more different. We had such a great time with Mike & Teresa, living temporarily in their neighborhood, with local markets, bakeries and cheese shops. Now we’re in the heart of the bustling downtown area of Naples. It’s like staying on Market Street of San Francisco—except without the homeless, and here the buildings are older, the traffic is noisier, and the shops are a bit more upscale.

    Still, it’s a good launching point for for trips to the archaeological sites of Pompeii and others we’re planning on visiting.    Read more

  • Diane and DarrylAmsterdam and Italy
    Day 10

    Herculaneum, Forever in 79 AD

    April 9, 2023 in Italy ⋅ ⛅ 57 °F

    Herculaneum is an archaeological site located south of Naples—about 20 minutes by train, and about halfway between the city and Pompeii.

    When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, it covered Herculaneum in as much as 75 feet of ash (roughly 5 times the amount of ash as Pompeii). This essentially vacuum-sealed Herculaneum, whose building interiors were much better preserved than in Pompeii.

    Vibrantly colored frescoes, mosaics and marble reliefs are preserved in place, though clearly damaged. A great deal of papyrus records of daily life survived the catastrophe, allowing us to know such details as the price of services at the bath/spa, menu items, residence and business ownership and so on.

    The audio guide was excellent, and it was wonderful to be able to walk freely among these ancient ruins.

    Back in Naples in the late afternoon, a trip to the National Archeological Museum allowed us to see many household artifacts that were not on site in Herculaneum, as well as building decorations (mosaics, frescoes, etc.) that had been removed from Pompeii.

    We almost didn’t make it back to Naples in time for the museum because the trains were either on strike for a few hours, or just closed temporarily for the Easter holiday. We heard both stories. But an enterprising bus company that usually takes people to see Vesuvius, told the assembled, forlorn crowd that they would take us back to Naples for €5 per person. Once in Naples, we couldn’t get a metro to the museum for the same reason (or some other), but at least the taxis weren’t on strike at the same time.    Read more

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